Your T-Shirt!

Custom Printed T-Shirts Business Plan

Strategy and Implementation Summary

Your T-Shirt! will leverage their two competitive edges to quickly gain market share. The competitive edges are an unprecedented catalog of graphic images and the quality of their computer generated sublimations, a function of using prototype HP sublimation technology. The marketing campaign will emphasize the ability to completely customize a shirt. Youth events and student groups will be targeted. The sales campaign will emphasize making the experience as easy and pleasing as possible to encourage repeat customers and word of mouth referrals.

5.1 Competitive Edge

Your T-Shirt! has two competitive edges that they will use to their advantage to achieve market penetration.

Large catalog of graphics -- Your T-Shirt! is developing several strategic relationships with existing graphics companies that have an extensive images catalogs. It would be difficult and expensive for Your T-Shirt! to create their own library of graphics but by developing relationships with companies who own existing libraries, Your T-Shirt! is able to offer its customers an expansive array of imagery. Your T-Shirt! pays a royalty for use of these graphics.

Quality of the sublimation -- Due to its networking contacts at Hewlett-Packard, and the use of prototype technology, Your T-Shirt! will be able to produce sublimations of much higher quality than any of their competitors. This gives Your T-Shirt! a fantastic competitive edge. At some point within the next two years this technology may be available to the public, however because of the close contacts Mr. Inkler shares with HP, Your T-Shirt! will always have cutting edge technology available, well in advance of any public release.

5.2 Sales Strategy

The sales strategy will emphasize the fact that ordering a shirt from Your T-Shirt! is a very easy and pleasing experience. The sales effort will work on the continual development of the website, the main tool used for ordering. It will be quite important to have a friendly, easy to use web interface for two main reasons. One, there are so many choices available that it could become daunting to the customer. The second reason is that a large portion of sales will be placed on the website. It is imperative to make it so easy that people don't stop part way through ordering due to cumbersome or difficult instructions. The website embraces the philosophy of making the experience so easy and pleasing that the customer comes back to buy more.

Your T-Shirt! will also rely on three other factors to help boost sales. The first is exemplary customer service. Having excellent service will provide the customer with the feeling that the business is looking out for the customer's interest. Second, when a customer places an order, they will probably be excited to see the finished product, so Your T-Shirt! will ensure the fastest turnaround time possible. Lastly, sales will be boosted by offering customers a high quality product. We will use high grade cotton shirts and state-of-the-art sublimation printing materials.

5.2.1 Sales Forecast

The sales forecast is reasonably conservative so that goals will be achievable. Sales will be slow initially, a function of the fact that Your T-Shirt! is a start up organization and it will take time to build a sufficient foundation. The following table and chart show sales forecasts by both month and year.

The sales forecast is broken down by product, graphics or artwork. "Graphics" indicates the customer will be using a pre-existing graphic, either one that they are bringing in or one that they are purchasing a license to use from Your T-Shirt! "Artwork" denotes that the customer is using a graphic that is being created specifically for them. All customers will purchase their shirt from Your T-Shirt!

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5.3 Marketing Strategy

The marketing campaign will seek to increase visibility for Your T-Shirt!, emphasizing the ability of the customer to completely customize their design. Your T-Shirt! will use several different venues to communicate this message.

Advertising -- Your T-Shirt! will run ads in several teen/young adult magazines whose readership demographics are similar to Your T-Shirt!'s.

Youth events -- Many different events will be sponsored as a means of increasing visibility. These include but are not limited to music festivals and sporting events along with the new genre of extreme sporting events.

Student groups -- Your T-Shirt! will attempt to gain awareness of the different student groups who actively purchase shirts for their members. Awareness will be achieved through a combination of sponsorship of student organization events as well as advertisements in magazines that specifically target this demographic.

5.4 Milestones

Your T-Shirt! has identified several milestones that are tangible and achievable. The milestones will serve as goals that the organization must reach to be successful. Please review the following section for details.

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